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FAITH NO MORE | 01.03.1995 | Raw

Raw Magazine | 01.03.1995 | Issue 170

Humping Axl's Leg | Neil Jeffries

FAITH NO More have come
of age. All the bullshit the band have been through now makes
sense. In fact, there's a point during 'Evidence', the slowie third
track on their new 'King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime' album, where
everything makes sense. Wah-wah guitar plays lazy
tennis with Roddy Bottum's string-like keyboard stabs, Bill Gould's
bass and Mike Bordin's hyper-relaxed drums form a black, Funky
sandwich that's swallowed by the psychosmoochie voice of Mike Patton.
Bordin can't contain his excitement: "I don't think we've ever
gotten the smooth song as smooth as we would like before,"
says Mike. "But this is as it should be. It's not like a Rock
band doing it for the sake of it, so it sounds forced or ham-fisted.
At a playback party in France these guys and their girlfriends were
slow-dancing to that track. I was so happy!

"Oh, and the
backing vocals are Patton. You're the third journalist across Europe
to ask who the 'girl' singer is!"

FAITH No More were
always the band most likely to l break the mould, this time they've
really done it. Six years on from the square-peg-in-a-round-hole
breakthrough album, 'The Real Thing', they've clearly learnt some
lessons.

Behind them are the
triumphs and the torments - a gruelling world tour and massive
success with 'The Real Thing', conflicts with a record company who
thought they could sell more of the same square-peg music if tailored
to the round hole of Metal, then 'Angel Dust', an awkward follow-up
that sharpened the corners rather than rounded them off and (after a
massive tour opening for Guns N' Roses) led to the
departure of recalcitrant guitarist Jim Martin. Martin was replaced
by Trey Spruance who played on the new record, but has in turn been
replaced by Dean Menta, of which more later. It has, you might say,
been a hell of a learning curve ...

And so it is an older,
wiser Faith No More (minus the new guy who has stayed Stateside) that
pair off to conclude a-two week European press and promotions jaunt
by talking to yours truly in a fifth floor suite of London's Mayfair
International Hotel.

First up are Bill
Goutd, short of hair and bright of eye, and Mike Patton, trim of
'tache and given to outbursts of Beavis and Butt-head-type laughter.
Patton relaxes in a chair while Gould sits cross-legged on the bed.
Half-an-hour later I ask more or less the same questions of Mike
Bordin and Roddy Bottum. Bordin assumes Gould's ecstatic parent roll,
while Bottum sits for the most part in an apparently distant silence,
dashing that image with occasional quick witted and concise answers.
Answers that are the lessons learned by Faith No More.

LESSON ONE: RECORD
COMPANY'S ARE NOT ALL CORPORATE ASSHOLES.

HOW, If they hated
their record label at the time of 'Angel Dust', everything seems fine
now... have the guys there changed?

Gould: "No, it's
the same people. Here, London Records, were great. But in the States,
at Warners, it's such a big company and they just didn't get it. But
we've changed. There's no point being a negative asshole or being
antagonistic."

Patton: "We are
happy with this record. There was no pushing and no hassle. It was
the record we wanted to make."

Gould: "This time
we like every song on the record. We've just said, 'However you wanna
do it, which ever way you want to go, just go! Run with it.' We don't
give a f**k 'cos we're happy with the record. After all, that's why
we're here, that's why we've gone through this year of

bullshit..."

LESSON TWO: BEING IN
FAITH NO MORE IS BETTER THAN NOT BEING IN FAITH NO MORE

DID YOU ever think
about splitting up?

Patton: "The
problem was, we had some songs kicking about that we knew were good.
So no, we never really entertained the idea."

Gould: "Splitting
probably would have been an easier thing to do. Probably preferable
at some times. But it wasn't really an option because we were writing
some really good songs."

Bordin: "I
didn't... but I'm sure somebody did. Between the records I wondered
if we'd ever get this out - with all the f**kin' shit that was going
on."

Like the Guns N' Roses
Get In The Ring US tour in summer '92?

Gould : "It
SUCKED!"

Bordin: "l
wouldn't realty agree with that. I was happy to be out playing in
front of a bunch of people, although it was weird."

Gould: "We felt
like we didn't have control over our own lives. So we were punching
in every direction we could until we found a hard spot. Then we'd
grab onto something. We made a lot of mistakes doing that, but we
were drowning!"

Patton: "It was
like grabbing onto Axl's leg and humping it for awhile, hahaha!"

Gould: "Yeah,
we'd talk shit about them until somebody fought back. We tried to see
what we could get away with. I think it was attributed as a real
negative thing, but for us it was healthy."

It sounds like a kind
of therapy.

Gould: "lt was!"

Patton: "And if
we didn't do it then, we'd be doing it now!"

LESSON THREE: LIFE IS
BETTER WITHOUT JIM MARTIN

HAVE YOU all changed
personally, and are things easier merely because Jim Martin is no
longer with the band?

Gould: "That's a
big difference."

Patton: "I think
that's mostly it."

Gould: "We've
never really written stuff with Jim, as a band. Usually we'd give him
a tape and he'd put stuff to it because he didn't tike practising
with us much."

How long has that been
going on?

Gould: "Forever!"

Patton: "He did
that on 'The Real Thing'!"

Gould: "He'd have
maybe one song that he'd want us to play per record, but most of the
time he didn't like what we did. It's hard enough if you don't work
together, but then if there's a huge taste difference as well, that
just makes it even more frustrating ... I played guitar on a lot of
the 'Angel Dust' songs because they just weren't ready. Then we
toured and you could see that he wasn't into the record, he wasn't
into the songs, he wasn't into the band. But we did a lot of work, we
worked our ass off for that record, so we got resentful towards him.
None of us were realty looking forward to getting back and
writing songs again. Still, we had a lot of ideas. We started writing
and Jim would come in once a week and we'd try to go over what we
were learning, but it just wasn't happening. We tried it for like two
months and finally we decided, 'This is ridiculous'."

LESSON FOUR: TIMING IS
EVERYTHING

SO WHY didn't you get
rid of Jim before?

Bordin: 'I don't know
if we should have. I don't think the time was right, honestly. Dean
certainly wouldn't have been around... I think we did it when it was
right. I also think that for my mind - and remember I have a
different take on this from the other guys, having known the f**ker
for 15 years I really hoped that during the process of the tour
something would click in and he would discover how to relate to the
songs. That was my hope. Yeah, it was totally futile and probably not
even realistic, but what the f**k? We followed through with it, then
started something different."

Patton: "It's
just not that easy. Plus when you've been involved with somebody for
years like that - like if you've ever had a girlfriend - you keep
on."

Gould: "Not only
that, it's really hard to get rid of somebody who doesn't want to
go."

Patton: "Someone
who won't even admit that there's a problem! And if there is, it's
your problem. Because we addressed the fact that there was a problem,
the problem was ours. It's the tree falling in the woods thing."

Gould: "But, hey,
we didn't want to slit our own throats."

Patton: "We were
also pretty stubborn. Probably a little too much so, hahaha!"

LESSON FIVE: IT'S NOT
EASY BEING DIFFERENT

Gould: "We took a
chance on 'Angel Dust', and we got a lot done as far as how people
perceived the band."

Patton: "That's
how it should be. Even if you're having a rotten time, you've got to
learn from it. That's what you're here for."

Gould: "Ever
since 1992 there's been the Pearl Jams and Nirvanas and other bands
that have broken, and we've been through all the bullshit that those
kind of bands are going through now. Maybe they'll adjust, maybe they
won't. But we were thrust into an environment, like in 1991, when our
peers weren't Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they were Poison, Whitesnake,
Guns N' Roses. There was a huge pressure for us to fit in.

"The Pearl Jam
guys are now starting to realise that, when you get into major
popularity, it isn't just people who have the same tastes as you who
like your band; there's lots of little kids, people who like Ace Of
Bass! Eddie will be getting kids in Ace Of Bass T-shirts saying he's
their favourite singer and he's having to deal with that. You have to
go through a process. You have to hate it to understand it. You have
to reject it to know whether you still want to do what you do.

"I can see that
with Kurt Cobain shooting himself, or whatever, people get confused.
Who are you gonna trust? Are you gonna trust your management who are
making a shit-load of money off you? Are you gonna trust this or are
you gonna trust that guy? No, you probably ain't gonna trust anybody,
so you fight everybody."

Patton: "That's
why it's your duty just to make yourself happy."

LESSON SIX: YOUR
SINGER KNOWS BEST!

AFTER JIM Martin left,
the band sent out guitar-less demo tapes to prospective candidates,
but were hugely disappointed with the results. They had a shortlist
of two: Trey Spruance of Patton 's side-project band Mr Bungle and
Geordie of Killing Joke. The omens were bad from the start with
Trey...

Bordin: "Trey
didn't come highly recommended by the only person in the band that
knew him! Mike Patton said, 'He's great guitarist, he'll do the job,
but he's lot dependable and he'll f**k us up ultimately due to his
lack of any sense of responsibility'."

With Geordie there was
another dilemma:

Bordin: "Geordie's
great, he's amazing, but we had such a difference in where we lived,
our backgrounds. And Trey we knew already. He was almost like part of
the family."

Patton: "It was
easier with Trey; a shorter leap of faith, but he didn't come with
flying colours. He didn't come with four stars or anything. Great
musician and all that - but I lad my doubts about how well we'd work
together."

Gould: "If you
want to get married again, the worst place to go looking is in sleazy
singles bars! And when you're looking for a guitar player, you're
looking for a wife! It's a marriage contract with somebody you want
to work with, see eye-to-eye with, and depend on. So you might as
well keep it as close to home as possible 'cos trust is a luge
thing."

Bottum: "Trey was
a good guitar player, basically. We can and have dealt with a lot of
weird personalities, and that wasn't really too important. It seemed
a really good thing to do so we jumped right in. We're all very
strange erratic, troublesome personalities at times. We dealt with
Jim Martin for a long time; the fact that Trey was probably the same
didn't really phase me."

Patton: "Trey
simply didn't want to make the commitment to tour with us. Like Billy
said, it's like getting married. Some people panic at the eleventh
hour, and Trey f**king threw the ring back! He ran out of the
ceremony, hahaha!"

Gould: "Dean was
a guy who could do the job, but he was so close to home we almost
wanted to look around a little more, actually, we'd thought that with
Trey, too. Trey's not a bad guy, it wasn't like that. We didn't have
a fight, he just freaked!"

Patton: "We don't
hate him. I mean, what could we say? You do what you gotta do, and it
took us 20 minutes to get on the phone with Dean."

Gould: "The funny
thing is, Dean would usually do the soundchecks because Jim wouldn't
do them a lot of the time. Dean would be playing the guitar, and we'd
laugh because he'd be playing the songs better than Jim would a lot
of the time. But we still didn't think of him 'cos when we got off
the road Dean went into computer stuff - he writes soundtracks for
CD-ROM games and stuff like that -so we figured he had his own career
and he was fine. Until that fateful day."

Patton: "If
change is happening, go with it! More than anything we all knew that,
with a new record and these songs, it wouldn't work with Matt. if he
made a suggestion we knew him welt enough to say, 'F**k you!'. And
he'd say the same to us."

Gould: "But he's
cool. We have like a brotherly respect, but at the same time, a
brotherly disregard for the other person's opinion. I remember once
Matt phoned me up at home ... (looks to Patton)... I don't know if I
ever told you this! He was freaked out 'cos I think Jim was calling
up about something and he said, 'You guys! I don't know what's going
on, I don't want to get in the middle what you guys need is either a
new guitarist, a new producer or both.

Patton: "NOWAY!
HAHAHAHA!"

Bottum: "It
seemed uitimately selfdefeating to continue to do a record with the
same producer. Andy did some great stuff with us, but over the course
of a career why limit yourself to one person? We're the kind of band
that prides itself on diversity, versatility,